Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a huge company.  At the close today, the company had a market cap of just shy of $117 billion, with a float of 5.56 billion shares.  After the bell today, Intel reported huge beats on both top and bottom lines, earning 51 cents a share on $10.8 billion in revenues.  This comfortably beat analyst expectations of 43 cents per share EPS on $10.25 billion in revenues.  Moreover, the company’s gross margin checked in at 67%, nicely above the average expectation of 64%.

Alcoa’s (NYSE: AA) earnings set the stage for an impressive rally today, as traders generally had suppressed expectations for Alcoa considering the market turmoil of late, and the company’s lackluster track-record in recent earnings periods.  Both Alcoa and Intel’s earnings showed increasing productivity, as these company’s slimmed down costs and benefited from an uptick in demand during the 2nd quarter.

Intel, one of the bellwethers of the tech sector, and a company which many gauge as an indicator for sector performance, sets the stage for the next tech giant, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to report this coming Thursday.  Intel, as the world’s leading chip maker, offers a glimpse into both end demand for tech products, and gives an idea as to the sentiment of device makers who use Intel chips in their products (of which Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is one such company).

With what should be a nice gap up tomorrow morning, Intel will open above it’s downtrend line in place since peaking out on April 15th.

Disclosure: Long GOOG

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